


Sick Day

by spaghettixday



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Comfort, Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-05
Updated: 2015-12-05
Packaged: 2018-05-05 00:33:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5354171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spaghettixday/pseuds/spaghettixday
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Broken ribs, lacerations, a spattering of bruises? No problem. A cold? Matt is down for the count.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sick with a horrible cold and I'm absolutely miserable. Someone with heightened senses would definitely be worse off, I tell myself to make myself feel better.

Radio silence. Foggy was used to it before, but now, knowing what Matt was out doing every night, just one missed call was enough to send him into a panic. Six missed calls from Foggy and four from Karen had Foggy ready to down a bottle of Tums, preparing for the worst as he made his way to Matt’s apartment. The memory of finding Matt half-dead on the floor as the Masked Man was still fresh in his mind, not something he wanted to relive.

Dread weighed him down, causing him to stop at Matt’s door, hand poised to knock. Finally, his fist connected with the door, pounding louder than he needed. “Matt! Come on, buddy, open the door!” He knocked again. “Just please don’t be dead on the floor.”

Noises from inside the apartment told him that Matt was indeed alive, and Foggy released a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “Thank God. Matty, you are going to catch _hell_ for ignoring our phone calls!” The door opened slowly, a very disoriented Matt standing before him. “Jesus, you look like hell warmed over.”

Matt wore a zip-up hoodie and a pair of sweatpants, his nose red and dry, the rest of his skin sallow. “About how I feel,” he croaked, stepping to the side to allow Foggy to enter the apartment.

“Why didn’t you answer our calls?” Foggy asked, taking in the mess of the apartment. Used white tissues were _everywhere_ , most of them nowhere near the trash can.

Matt followed Foggy into the apartment, walking slowly, hands outstretched to feel his way. “I, um… I can’t find my phone.” He bumped into the couch, wincing, and moved to sit on the couch. “I could hear it, but I couldn’t… _find_ it,” he said, tilting his head back and sniffling.

Foggy shook his head and slipped his phone out of his pocket, dialing Matt’s number. “ _Foggy. Foggy. Foggy._ ” The automated voice rang out, muffled, but nearby. He walked around the couch and picked a pair of pants up off the floor. “Found it,” Foggy announced, fishing the phone out of the pocket of the pants. “Seven missed calls from me, five from Karen.”

Matt exhaled through his nose, the sound coming out as a high pitched whine, and then gasped for breath through his open mouth. “Have you even taken anything? Mucinex, DayQuil, anything?” Matt slowly shook his head. “Do you even _have_ any of that?” More head shaking. “Great. Probably part of the Catholic self-flagellation thing you have going on. I’ll be back in half an hour, buddy, and we will get you right as rain. Don’t worry about Karen, I’ll call her, fill her in.”

It took Matt a minute to realize that Foggy was gone. He hadn’t heard Foggy’s footsteps on the floor, hadn’t heard the door shut, hadn’t heard anything beside the muffled hum of congestion in his ears and the amplified sound of his own heart and wheezy breathing. It reminded him of a time going swimming after the accident, when he realized the constant cacophony was dulled when he submerged himself in the water.

With the severe cold he was suffering, Matt’s senses were thrown out of whack. He was experiencing the spins, the world of fire a swirling vortex that he couldn’t make out. Smells were gone, tastes were bland, and his hearing was muffled. Matt rarely found himself sick, but when he was, it was a miserable experience.

“I come bearing gifts!” Matt opened his eyes, not remembering even falling asleep. “We’ve got daytime medicine, nighttime medicine, tissues, VapoRub, liquids, and soup!” Rustling as Foggy sorted through the bags, emptying the contents onto Matt’s coffee table. “Well, there’s potato soup and tomato soup. You’d think a pharmacy would have chicken noodle soup, but it was the one soup they _didn’t_ carry.” Foggy stopped and looked at Matt, whose eyes were closed once more. “Have you even slept? And please, _please_ tell me you haven’t gone out to fight crime while you’re like this.” He opened one of the boxes and popped two pills from the foil. “Hold out your hand.”

Matt shrugged, lifting his head and holding out his hand, accepting the pills from Foggy. “An hour here or there. I kept waking up to blow my nose or because I couldn’t breathe. And no, no crime fighting. I could barely make it up the stairs, let alone jump from roof to roof.” He popped the pills into his mouth, swallowing them with a drink from the water bottle Foggy had also handed him.

“Good, thank God. At least you have the common sense to stay inside when you’re sick.” Matt smirked. “Look, I called Karen, told her we’re making this a three day weekend. You go sleep for a while, I’ll clean this place up. In case you didn’t know, it looks like a toddler tore open four boxes of Kleenex and threw them into a fan. They’re everywhere, man.”

“It wasn’t four boxes. It was only three.” Matt forced himself off of the couch, lurching forward.

Foggy couldn’t let his best friend stumble his way to his bedroom and crash into everything on the way; he took hold of Matt’s elbow and guided him into the bedroom. “Bed here.” Matt dropped onto the bed, pulling the sheets over his head. “Get some sleep, okay, buddy? I’ll be here when you wake up.”

Matt mumbled his thanks, but the sound was lost in his pillow. He listened to Foggy walk out of the room and closed his eyes, falling asleep almost immediately.

\---

Matt woke to the muffled sound of singing. He yawned and sat up in bed, sitting still for a moment to let his equilibrium catch up with his movements. Once he didn’t feel like he was still on a merry-go-round, Matt rose from the bed, slowly making his way toward Foggy singing in the other room.

“What’re you doing?” Matt asked, feeling his way to the couch. The sleep he’d gotten helped; the swirling vortex of fire around him was slightly more stable than it had been, and he was able to make it to the couch without running into anything.

“I am bringing a little sunshine into your life in the form of showtunes and homemade chicken noodle soup, recipe courtesy of Anna Nelson. If this doesn’t cure what ails you, nothing will.” Matt grinned as he lowered himself onto his side on the couch, closing his eyes and listening to Foggy in the kitchen, continuing to hum and sing lightly as he cooked. The sound took him back to their college days, when Foggy would hum and sing as he studied or cooked, unaware that Matt could hear him even with his earphones in. Matt smiled as he closed his eyes, drifting off to the sounds from the kitchen.

\---

“Soup spoon’s at your three o’clock, a glass of ginger ale at your ten, and soup bowl is in the center of the clock. Hold out your hand for more pills.” Matt swallowed the pills with the ginger ale while Foggy sat down at the table across from him. “If you don’t like this soup, I’ll take it as a personal offense.”

“I’m sure it’s great, Foggy,” Matt said, taking a spoonful in his mouth. “Right now I can’t really taste anything at all.” He took another spoonful. “I can tell it’s warm. Feels good on my throat.”

After two bowls of soup, the first thing he’d eaten in a day and a half, Matt was back on the couch, lying down, a blanket draped over his body. Foggy had partitioned the remaining soup into several Tupperware containers, labeled the boxes of medicine with Braille labels, and moved the trash can and a new box of tissues closer to Matt’s reach. “There’s a bottle of water on the coffee table, and there’s Gatorade and orange juice in the fridge. Make sure you eat and drink plenty of fluids, okay, Matty? And take the day tomorrow if you have to. Karen and I can handle things just fine.”

“No, Foggy, I’m fine. I’ll be in tomorrow.”

“Matt, how many fingers am I holding up?”

Matt paused, fingering the edge of the blanket draped over him. “Three?” He didn’t mean for it to come out as a question, tried to put confidence behind his response to prove that yes, he was perfectly fine. “I can’t take two days off, Foggy.”

“You can. And you will. And I was holding up two.” Foggy ran his hand over Matt's head, a subtle way of checking his temperature. Matt closed his eyes at the chill of Foggy's hand against his burning skin. “Feel better, buddy. And take your medicine.”

“Thanks, Foggy. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Come in and I’ll kick your ass, Murdock.”


	2. Chapter 2

“Karen, I’ll be in late today, I’ve just got to swing by, check on Matt, make sure he’s going to stay home today.” Foggy knew Matt well enough to know that he was going to try to go in, no matter how he was feeling. He came in with broken bones, bruises, lacerations, of course he would think he’s fine with a cold, even if it made him blinder than usual.

Matt answered the door looking only slightly better than the day before, although his nose was still red and dry from the tissues. He was already half dressed in his business attire, ready to start his day. “I knew you’d try to go to work,” Foggy said, pushing past Matt and entering the apartment. “That’s why I’m here to stop you. So take off your pants.”

“What, no foreplay?” Matt asked, his laugh turning into a deep barking cough. “I’m fine, Foggy. I can go to work.” He followed Foggy into his apartment, hand against the wall.

“People who are ‘fine’ do not cough like that or wheeze when they breathe.” Matt sat down on the couch to catch his breath while Foggy entered his bedroom, picking the clothes Matt had worn the day before up off the floor. “We don’t even have a busy day, Matt. Things have slowed down since that boom right after you caught Fisk. Karen and I can manage.”

Matt accepted the clothes from Foggy, but he didn’t change into them. “You shouldn’t _have_ to manage. I can come in. I’m fine. It’s just a cough. I’ve been in with worse.”

“I know, because you’re bat-shit crazy. But injuries and illnesses are two different things.” Foggy started toward the kitchen. “Say you come into work, all sick with the flu as you are. A lovely young woman comes in for help, and she’s immediately taken by the charming blind man, so of course she sits closest to you.” Matt could tell he was getting into cabinets, but he couldn’t tell what Foggy was doing. “Your germs get onto her, whether you cough on her or not, and she takes those germs home and immediately cradles her sweet little child in her arms. Now that child has the flu. Do you want that, Matt? Huh? You just gave that fictitious child the flu.”

Grumbling from the other room. “Fine, I won’t go.”

“Good. How do you like your eggs?”

\---

Shallow breaths. Shallow breaths kept the wheezing at bay, which kept the coughing at bay. Matt’s throat and chest already burned from coughing throughout the night and the morning, his entire body ached, but he still felt guilty for staying home. Foggy had a point, though. He would feel even worse if someone else came down with a sickness because of him. Instead, he stayed on the couch, playing one of the audiobooks loaded on his mp3 player, although he was only half paying attention to it.

His ears were still congested, he still had the spins, but smells and tastes were partially returned. After not tasting anything for two days, tastes went from bland to extreme. The cough drops Foggy had purchased were unflavored, but the menthol in them was maddeningly off-putting, enough that Matt had only taken one before hiding the bag deep in the recesses of one of his kitchen cabinets.

A hot shower helped, the steam loosening the mucus in his sinuses and chest, the heat relaxing his aching body. He lingered until the water began to cool.

Matt reheated a serving of the soup Foggy made, finally getting to taste it. It didn’t play well with the cough syrup he’d taken, but beyond that, it was delicious.

He fell asleep on the couch with the warmth of the soup soothing his throat and chest.

\---

“You know you should see a doctor, right?”

“Don’t like doctors.”

“I realize that.”

“A doctor will just tell me to get rest and plenty of fluids.”

“ _Or_ , here’s a crazy idea, they’ll give you medicine that could actually help you. Like cough syrup with codeine. Or Tamiflu.” Foggy stopped by Matt’s apartment in the evening, half to check on him, half to make sure he wasn’t trying to suit up and slip out the window. “Who knows, this could be a bacterial infection, which you, _surprise,_ need actual medicine to treat.”

Matt shook his head, pulling his blanket more over his shoulders as he leaned forward on the dining table. “It’s not bacterial.”

“And how do you know that? No. Wait. I don’t think I want to know.” Foggy placed a bowl of soup in front of him. “Can you tell where the bowl is?”

Matt nodded and picked up his spoon. “For the most part, everything’s stopped spinning. My ears haven’t popped, so my hearing is still shot.”

“Please tell me Daredevil is taking another night off.”

“Daredevil is taking another night off.”

“Oh, thank God.” Foggy sat down at the table across from Matt, no food for himself. “I worry about you, buddy. I know you’ve got this new suit, but that doesn’t stop the worry. I should probably invest in Tums.” Matt chuckled quietly, not wanting to break into a coughing fit. “Make sure you get some sleep tonight. I know how little sleep you get most nights. That’s probably why you’re sick.”

Matt sipped at his soup. “I’ve never gotten much sleep, Foggy.”

“Yeah, I remember law school.” Foggy would wake up nights and find Matt sitting on the edge of his bed, staring at the wall. Add in the times he’d come back from class to find Matt sleeping, Foggy thought Matt had Non-24, had even tried to get him help for it. After finding him half dead, Matt told him he’d wake up because the sounds of sirens and screaming and crying crept into his mind, forcing him out of sleep. “But when you’re sick, you need sleep.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll get sleep. I apparently have a very low tolerance for NyQuil.”

\---

His ears finally popped an hour after Foggy left, the sudden influx of sounds causing him pain, leaving him gritting his teeth with his hands pressed against his ears as he tried to regain control.

The sounds of the city were getting to him. Matt started to dress in his Daredevil suit, but he stopped halfway through, coughing so hard he was gasping for breath. Even if he did manage to make it out into the city, his own breathing and coughing would slow him down. No. Matt buried his face in his hands and removed the suit, guilt washing over him. He quashed the guilt, put in his earphones, and picked up where he’d left off on the audiobook on his mp3 player. The horror novel he’d chosen drowned out the sounds of the city that bled into his apartment.

A dose of NyQuil further helped drown out the noise. He’d learned the night before that the medicine took effect quickly, knocking him out in less than an hour. Earphones still in, Matt crawled under his silk sheets, a blanket on top of the sheets to keep him warm, and closed his eyes.

\---

He woke the next morning with a dead battery in his mp3 player, earphone cords tangled around his head, and surprisingly clear nasal passages

His chest and throat still ached, he was still coughing, but he didn’t feel like death warmed over. Matt made the decision to go into work, figuring if they had clients, he would keep his distance.

“One notification. Messages. Foggy. Now. How many fingers am I holding up up pointing index victory hand.”

“Text Foggy. Three period. See you in twenty period. Send.” Matt slipped his phone into his pocket, grabbed his cane, and was out the door. His world of fire was the steadiest it had been in days.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I literally wrote this entire thing because I'm procrastinating the next chapter of my other work (mostly because I've been sick and can't figure it out) and I took NyQuil about an hour before starting this, so if it makes like zero sense, my bad!


End file.
